Reports of fighting yesterday in Slovyansk have continued to grow, with reports that the Ukrainian ground troops that invaded the city are escalating their offensive, and civilians are fleeing en masse.
Ukraine’s military has claimed “more than 300” rebels were killed and at least 500 others wounded in and around Slovyansk in the last 24 hours, a figure that seems dramatically higher than anything supported by rebel comments.
Bizarrely, though battles raged throughout Tuesday and into Wednesday, the military’s claim of enormous rebel deaths did not come with any new reports of casualties on their own side, which as of yesterday amounted to two killed and a few dozen wounded. Likewise, they reported all the slain as “pro-Russian militants,” with no indications of what the civilian toll in such enormous violence in an urban area would have to be.
Slovyansk and neighboring Kramatorsk are the first major cities on the border between the separatist-held portion of Ukraine and the cities held by the central government, and are on a major highway linking government-held Kharkiv with the eastern oblasts. Several previous offensives against the cities failed, but this time the reports are of much more serious fighting.
Putin is a puppet. No one can trust Russia. Russia always supported zionism/Israel and the west against Muslims. Although "new leaders" in Ukrain have killed more than 300 people, Putinhas announced that he is WILLING TO SHAKE HAND WITH THE MURDERERS, while Obama is arming the terrorists in Syria to topple an elected president, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad at any cost.
Putin does not deserve to be supported by the stupid 'progressives'. He always protected the interest of the corrupt and criminal elite, like the war criminal Bush, Clinton, or Obama in Washington.
300 killed to 2? Such numbers can happen, in almost every case they are situations that civilized human beings would call a massacre.
300 killed to 2 would nornally be a massacre BUT not when the murderers are supported and armed by WESTERN NATIONS.
Massacres only occur when the BAD GUYS do the killing.
Here it is being done by mercenaries supported by the USG ,EU and NATO so its o.k.
Let's hope that those who said that Bashar Al-Assad was "killing his own people" and who wanted NATO to bomb Syria will similarly blame Poroshenko for killing his own people. But I doubt it.
Indiscriminately firing unguided missiles at civilians in Lugansk is a war crime. Where is Human Rights Watch on this? It has been co-opted by the US government, so it will keep quiet like the bought-and-paid-for western media.
Who was it that said “the first casualty of war is truth” ?
All the signs are that the rebels are beaten. Putin won't annex and the contractors' merceneries seem to have vanished as mysteriously as they appeared. Bya ttacking police and army posts, the rebels have tacitly announced that they are no longer being supplied with arms and ammunition from Russia and are running out of both. The various guerilla wars of the past 50 years or so teach us that an insurgency cannot survive without a foreign backer and the rebel colonists clearly no longer have one. The government can see that as clearly as anybody else, so it's consolidating its advantage. The difference in figures is the normal spin in such cases, each side caliming the outcome is favourable to them. Indeed, it's exactly the same spin as Mr Ditz himself is using!
Lol, you're so pretentious!
Anyone familiar with rebellions will recognize what's happening as the radicalization phase.
Once the the civilian population the rebels come from has been brutalized sufficiently the urban guerrilla phase can be launched in the knowledge that the rebels can expect local support to "swim" in. This generally leads to a long, long and stalemated war resulting frequently in the withdrawal of the occupation forces and a negotiated settlement that grants some of the demands that led to the rebellion.
Ukraine is entering a similar situation as Algeria under the French or Ireland and, later, Northern Ireland under the British. There are many other examples.
The question is who benefits? The first answer might be "Russia, of course" but with the US's recent history of leaving a trail of broken states torn by internal strife all around the southern Mediterranean, the Horn of Africa and Middle East one has to ask if this is a concerted policy of the USG or simply gross ineptitude.
It seems whether history is studied or not, it repeats itself constantly.